For too long, Washington has stumbled from budget crisis to budget crisis.
Government shutdowns, short-term spending bills and an ad-hoc oversight process
have corrupted our nation's ability to budget effectively. Many of our problems
stem from Congress consistently failing to pass an annual budget and its
appropriations bills.

Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.)

Ever year, Congress is required by law to pass a budget. Congress is also required
to pass 12 different spending bills to fund the government. Since Congress created
new budget rules in the mid-1970s, they have never passed both a budget and all
required spending bills on time in the same year. Never.

In fact, since 2001, Congress has managed to enact only 8.3 percent of those
spending bills on time. Our current budget system actually works worse in election
years. In the past eight election years, Congress has failed 75 percent of the
time to even pass a budget. No boss in the world would accept this work
performance from his or her employees, and it's unacceptable that Congress can't
get its work done for the American people.

Recent studies have also shown that our budget process encourages agencies to
develop a "use it or lose it" mentality. Agencies spend nearly 20 percent of their
annual funds in the final five weeks of the year. Billions are spent
unnecessarily, simply to avoid "losing" the money or giving it back to the
Treasury.

Additionally, Congress wastes billions every year funding programs that are
unnecessary and duplicative because it simply doesn't have enough time to properly
review the government's budget and spending activities. This is a clear failure to
govern, and both parties are responsible. The American people deserve better than
a broken system that creates unwanted economic uncertainty.

In order to foster greater economic certainty and create a better functioning,
more efficient federal government, Congress should switch to a biennial budgeting
system. Twenty states currently use biennial budgeting, and have produced great
results. Every President since Ronald Reagan has supported switching to a two-year
system. Now, after dozens of conversations with members of Congress on both sides
of the aisle over the past few months, I am pleased to say that my legislation has
more than 140 bipartisan cosponsors, and was recently approved by the House Budget
Committee on a strong bipartisan vote of 22-10.

A biennial budgeting system creates greater oversight of federal agencies and the
programs they oversee. Instead of forcing agencies to spend all of their time
bureaucratically researching, planning, and submitting budget plans for the
upcoming fiscal year, biennial budgeting creates set times for departments to
submit their budget plans, and dedicates the rest of the time to actually
governing. And instead of encouraging agencies to use funds wastefully at the end
of the year simply so they don't risk having a smaller budget the next year,
agencies would have a longer time window to make effective, necessary spending
decisions.

We cannot allow future generations to suffer because of our fiscal failures. In
order to fix our broken process, Congress should scrap our current dysfunction
that promotes waste and economic uncertainty, and instead implement a process that
gives Congress more time to research and discuss the problems in a responsible,
fact-based manner. Switching to a biennial budgeting system won't fully solve our
nation's budget woes, and hard decisions will still remain, but it will allow for
Congress to better understand the problems and find responsible solutions to them.